


Heading For The Light

by mothi



Category: Traveling Wilburys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 13:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15842526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothi/pseuds/mothi
Summary: The Wilburys go on a 'road trip'.





	Heading For The Light

The doorbell rang at six-fifteen AM. At six-fifteen-and-one-second AM., someone knocked furiously on the door and shouted, “Oi, Tom! Thomas! Petty! Out here!”

Tom opened the door approximately twenty-five seconds later, in his pyjamas, only mildly terrified out of his wits, and with his hair—wow, he didn’t know it could do that—sticking out horizontally at the back.

“Jesus _fuck_ , George,” he said, eloquently.

“Jesus was celibate, Tommy,” George said brightly. “Now come on, get your clothes on.”

“Why, what’s goi—where—it’s six in the _morning_ , George.”

It was then that he noticed, with a lurch of apprehension, that George had a faintly manic gleam in his eyes—eyes which widened alarmingly with his next two words.

“Road. Trip.”

Tom stared at the man on his doorstep, who was somehow managing to show every single one of his teeth with a smile so huge it practically consumed his face. The excitement radiating from him was so intense Tom could almost feel it wafting into his house through the open door, and—more worryingly—behind him, parked in Tom’s driveway, was a small van with the words ‘THE TRAVELING WILBURYS’ painted hastily on the side. Underneath this George had also apparently attempted to draw what was either a guitar or an aubergine. Whichever it was, it was missing several crucial components.

“George,” said Tom.

“Tom!” said George.

“Why are we going on a road trip at six in the morning, George.”

“Because we’re The Traveling Wilburys!” George said enthusiastically, pointing unnecessarily at the words on the van, as though Tom may have forgotten the band’s name. “But we haven’t done any travelling yet. So we’re going on a road trip!”

Tom scrubbed his hand down his face and tried to work out if he was having a very realistic dream with a very realistic George. Eventually he decided it wasn’t a dream, mostly because George chose that moment to bound up the steps and steer Tom into the house ( _his_ house), saying as he did so, “We’re going to Jeff’s after this, then Roy’s, then Bob’s. Road trip, Tommy! It’s gonna be brilliant, so go get dressed. Road trip!”

And that was how Tom found himself in George’s van (which he had supposedly borrowed from a friend, but George looked far too shifty saying this for Tom to believe it) at six-thirty AM on a Tuesday, driving to Jeff Lynne’s house with three spare pairs of pants in a plastic bag and a guitar on the backseat.

Surprisingly, Jeff was far more amicable than Tom had been when it came to George hammering on his door in the early hours of a weekday morning. At least, he seemed to be, but Tom couldn’t say for certain because he fell asleep in the front seat in the time it took George to get out the van and reach Jeff’s front door. Jeff’s subsequent appearance in the back of the van made Tom even more uncertain if he was awake or not, because nobody’s hair should look that good at—whatever time it was in the morning. Too early. Nobody’s hair should look that good at too early in the morning. Jeff also looked frighteningly cheerful for someone who was probably asleep four minutes ago, and he gave Tom a friendly wave as he courteously shifted his guitar over to lay next to Tom’s.

“Alright, mate?” he said, genially. “George wake you up by playing the bongos on your door too?”

Tom responded by making a painful sound in his throat and flopping his head down onto the dashboard.

Roy’s response to George’s road trip wake-up call was perhaps even more alarming than Jeff’s had been, because Roy was, horrifyingly, already awake. He had even seen them coming from the kitchen window as they rattled up the drive, giving a composed wave with the hand that wasn’t holding a mug. (The mug had a cat on it.)

“Hey,” he said as he climbed into the van, “Jeff. Tom. Road trip.”

“Why are you awake at seven AM, Roy?” Tom asked blearily.

“I like to be awake for the birds,” Roy said, because of course he did. And that was that.

“Bob’s now,” George said, as he fastened his seatbelt and set the gas. “And then we’re on the road! Woo!”

“Woo!” said Jeff and Roy, in unnerving synchrony.

Tom was starting to think he had joined a band that was composed entirely of maniacs.

It was a slightly more reasonable hour by the time they got to Bob’s house, so Tom’s brain had started running a little more smoothly than it had been until this point. At least it didn’t feel like the inside of a prune at any rate, which was a definite improvement, although he still hadn’t managed to get his hair to lie flat yet.

Bob was most certainly not awake when they arrived. It took a very long time for George to reappear, which led to an entertaining discussion for the van-dwellers about what he was doing, and which ultimately concluded with the theory that Bob had a trapdoor that opened under his front porch if anyone rang the doorbell before nine AM. Or they were making out. One of the two.

Judging by the expression on Bob’s face when George finally dragged him to the van, they might not have been too far off the truth—with the first theory, at least. Tom had a strong feeling that if anyone but George had attempted to wake Bob up for a road trip before noon, some part of their body would have been extremely sore by now. George plonked Bob in between Roy and Jeff, patted him briefly on the head, and whizzed around the side of the van to get into the driver’s side. Looking over the back of his seat, Tom suspected that Bob was either still asleep and had never actually woken up, or he had already passed out in the twelve milliseconds he had been sitting down. Both these theories were proved wrong, however, when Bob said, in a voice that was so gravelly it may as well have been entirely gravel and no words, “What. The shit.”

“Kindred spirit, man,” Tom said, and immediately fell asleep again.

He woke up thirty-eight miles later with the sun hanging offensively low in the sky and George humming along to something on the radio. From the back he could hear Jeff and Roy joining in at seemingly random moments, and just audible above both was the soft sound of Bob snoring gently between them.

“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey,” George said, glancing away from the road to smile radiantly at him.

“You’re supposed to say that before someone wakes up, not after,” Tom said, trying to peel his face off the window as painlessly as possible and rub his eyes at the same time.

“Well, we don’t have any eggs and bakey either, so it was unnecessary in a number of ways. Eggs and bacon, I mean.”

“Hey, George, _did_ you pack any food?” Jeff called from the backseat.

“Sure,” George responded, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder towards the back of the van, “I brought some, uh—beans. Tins of beans.”

There was a short silence, before George added, in a hopeful voice, “And some Hobnobs?”

“Woo,” said Roy, unenthusiastically.

They drove for another two hours as the sun rose steadily in the sky and the Hobnobs began to sound ever more appealing the longer Tom went without food. George didn’t seem to have a specific destination, but there was no doubt that he was having the time of his life; every few minutes he would glance into the backseat in the rear-view mirror and beam ecstatically when he saw them all still there. Bob had managed to remain asleep for the whole journey and was steadily dropping his head further and further down Jeff’s shoulder, who subsequently had a permanent face full of hair. Roy had, slightly unsettlingly, been smiling since they set off, and was swaying gently with the movement of the van. It was weirdly natural, sitting in a van on a road in the middle of nowhere with four musical legends, the conscious ones of which were humming along to the Ronettes tape George had put on.

It was another two-and-a-half hours before George finally turned off the country road they had been driving down into a much narrower track that was almost entirely pothole and no road. A few minutes on this road led them to a field overlooking more fields, which was where George parked, bringing the van to a halt with an unhealthy sort of coughing sound beneath a large beech tree.

For a few moments they sat in silence, adjusting to the quiet after the constant engine sounds of the last few hours.

“Nice field,” Jeff said eventually.

“We’re stopping here for a bit,” George said, opening his door. “I’ve got a tent in the boot. Someone poke Bob, we’re getting out.”

Bob, who had been slumped so low over Jeff that his nose was squashed against Jeff’s right thigh, woke up with a sound like a pile of rocks being stepped on and said, “Eugh. Hechgh. Fuck.”

“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey,” said Jeff, in what was evidently supposed to be a scouse accent but instead just sounded like he had something up his nose.

“Eugh,” Bob said again; then, lifting his head slightly to peer up at the body to which the thigh he was lying on was attached, “Oh. Hey, Jeff.”

“Hey, Bob. We’re getting out.”

“Alright,” Bob said noncommittally, and sat up with such force the momentum made him flop over onto Roy instead. “Ouch. Hey, Roy.”

“Hey, Bob.”

“We’re getting out?”

“George has ‘A Plan’,” Tom said, adding some air quotes for good measure.

Bob dragged himself off Roy’s legs with what looked like a considerable amount of effort and glanced around the van with vague interest. “So George really did put me in his van for a road trip,” he said. “I thought I dreamt that.”

“Entirely possible, man,” Tom said, just as Roy’s door was flung open from the outside and George appeared like a very bouncy spectre in the gap.

“Come on, lads!” he said, gesticulating energetically behind him. “Tent time!”

It turned out that what George meant by ‘I’ve got a tent’ was ‘I’ve got a bright yellow one-man tent and three poles but I left two at home so the front doesn’t stay up and also there’s a dead spider in one of the inside pockets’. For this reason, Tent Time only lasted three minutes, as the assembly process had two steps to it: 1) put tent on ground, and 2) put three poles in three holes. The conclusion of Tent Time revealed George standing like a Homeric champion with both hands on his hips, surveying the fruits of his labours with ferocious pride. After a few moments of what appeared to be self-congratulation, he turned to the other four, who were seated on various rocks or, in Bob’s case, the ground, and said, triumphantly, “Tent.”

Bob performed one, very slow blink.

“Tent,” echoed Tom, when George continued his exultant stare.

Tom saw Jeff look at the tent. The very, very small tent.

“George,” Jeff began.

“Jeff!” said George.

“George, the tent is very small.”

“We’ll fit,” George said confidently. “We can be all squeezed in together. Like sardines. Or orange juice.”

“We could sleep in the van,” Roy pointed out helpfully.

George looked agonised. “No, Roy, that’s not the point. It’s a road trip. We have to sleep in a tent. That’s the point of a road trip. That’s why it’s called _road trip_.”

“I think you’ve got ‘road trip’ and ‘camping trip’ muddled up there, mate,” Jeff said. “Road trips are when you drive. On roads.”

“We did drive! _And_ it was on a road!”

“I’ll be a sardine,” Bob said, inconsequentially.

“Exactly,” George said, folding his arms smugly as though this proved his point precisely.

“No one is being a sardine,” Jeff said, in a mildly frustrated voice.

“I’ll be a sardine,” Bob said again. “I won’t be orange juice, though. Someone else can be orange juice.”

“I’ll be orange juice,” said Roy good-naturedly.

“No one is being orange juice either!” Jeff said, with more frustration.

Tom sensed that the conversation was getting out of hand.

“How about we try the tent out first?” he suggested, before Bob could say anything else about sardines. “I mean, we won’t know if it’s too small until we’ve all got in it.”

“I’ll go first,” George said, very predictably. He did a sort of enthusiastic quickstep over to the mouth of the tent, dropped to his hands and knees and crawled all the way to the back (which admittedly wasn’t far. His feet were still sticking out).

“OOH, LOVELY!” he roared over his shoulder, as though he was reporting back from the bottom of Krubera Cave. “REALLY SPACIOUS!”

“George, we can hear you,” Tom said, standing maybe a foot away from George’s head.

“Come on in,” George continued at a more appropriate volume, wriggling around so his body was parallel to the tent walls. “It’s brill. Great interior decorating.”

Jeff was the first to copy George, crouching down and following him inside. He flopped down next to George and folded his hands beneath his head, staring up at the lemon-yellow ceiling.

“Well, this is already too many people,” he said, “but you were right about the interior decorating. The dead spider really adds to it.”

“Roy, join the tent party,” George called back out the opening, brushing the spider to the back of the tent for safekeeping.

By the time Roy had squashed himself in beside George and Jeff, the tent was bulging in several unhealthy places and it was becoming apparent that nobody was going to have enough tent to cover anything below their knees. By this time it was fairly late in the day; in fact, Tom had no idea how they had managed to spend so much time staring at the tent, as the sun was starting to go down and they still hadn’t finished getting in it.

“Bob, I think it’s your turn,” Tom said apologetically, as someone in the tent was elbowed in the face and gave a loud exclamation. “Go poke someone with your elbows.”

“I don’t know, man,” Bob said, staring at the painfully yellow blob of fabric with three pairs of legs sticking out. “I’ll get sat on.”

“Come on, Bobby,” came George’s muffled voice from inside the tent. “We’ll give you lots of room.”

“You’re small, you’ll fit,” Jeff added encouragingly.

There was the sound of someone getting elbowed again, and Jeff said “Ow! Fine, sorry, Bob, I’m sure you’re absolutely massive.”

“He’s normal sized,” Roy said kindly, patting the non-existent space next to him. He was actually just patting the wall.

“Yeah, we all know Bob’s normal sized,” Tom said, in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “He’s a good, normal height. Like a…person.”

“Like an absolutely massive person,” Jeff tacked on, then said “Ow!” again.

“Yeah, we all love your size, Bob,” George called. “Great size. My favourite size, actually.”

“I’m getting in just to stop you all talking about this,” Bob said, and vanished into the tent so quickly he basically evaporated. Tom didn’t blame him, honestly.

“Right, Tom, it’s your turn,” came George’s voice, after a few minutes of wiggling and scuffling noises, as well as Jeff saying, “Nice to meet you, Normal-Sized Bob. I’m Normal-Sized Jeff. This is Normal-Sized George and Normal-Sized Roy, and out there’s Normal-Sized Tom. We’re the Normal-Sized Wilb—Ow!”

From the inside, the tent was, if possible, even smaller than it appeared on the outside. That was likely because it was filled with four middle-aged men lying mostly on top of each other, none of whom were staying particularly still, even if one of them was perhaps slightly smaller than normal sized.

“Tommy, you made it!” George said delightedly, as though Tom had just arrived late to a birthday party. “Come and find a space.”

“I’m struggling a bit there, George,” Tom said, squatting in the opening of the tent and peering in at the mass of legs and, thanks to Jeff and Bob, hair.

“Come and sit on Bob,” Jeff suggested.

“Do _not_ come and sit on Bob,” George said forcefully, extracting his arm with difficulty to whack Jeff on the head. “We’ve already lost him twice.”

“I think you’ve lost him again,” Tom pointed out, scanning the various arms and legs.

“Ah, shit,” George said regretfully. “Bob, where’ve you got to?”

“Under here,” came a very muffled voice after a moment.

“Roy, you’re squashing him,” Jeff said, pulling Roy’s arm so he rolled over on top of George. Where he had been lying was a very flat Bob, looking peevishly up at Jeff like an angry pancake.

“Told you I’d get sat on,” he said, in a disgruntled voice.

“Sorry, Bob,” Roy said remorsefully. “I thought you were the ground.”

“No worries, Roy.”

“Tom!” George said agitatedly, before any more could be said on the subject. “Get in! We’re one Wilbury short of a full tent!”

Tom was fairly certain that it was only a shared adoration of George that stopped them all ditching the tent and getting back in the van once Tom had clambered in. He wasn’t sure who he was lying on, but his nose was squashed against the roof of the tent and he could feel a cool breeze brushing his ankles where his legs were sticking out horizontally a foot off the ground. After a few moments of rustling as everyone repositioned themselves, a silence fell, all of them lying quiet in the tiny tent for the first time since they got in.

“Have you thought how weird this would look if anyone went past?” Jeff said, eventually.

There was a pause.

“What’s that noise?” Tom said, twisting his head so his ear was squashed against the roof instead of his nose.

“That’s Bob laughing in Jeff’s hair,” George said affectionately.

“Five musicians in a tent,” Jeff continued.

Roy and George had joined in with Bob’s muffled laughter, which told Tom it was them he was lying on.

“All our legs sticking out,” Jeff concluded.

Now they were all laughing, fairly hysterically, less at what Jeff had said and more at the ridiculousness of the situation. Tom tried to imagine what a passer-by would assume, but gave up once he got to the dead spider. And the legs.

As it turned out, laughing was a bad idea, because a few moments later the seams tore and the whole tent collapsed in a cloud of tumbling Wilburys.

For a few minutes they all lay on the ground, staring up at the evening sky in vague bewilderment. Then George said, mournfully, “Ah. My tent.”

Apparently that was enough to set Bob off again, who had somehow managed to get his face in George’s hair now despite no longer being compressed into a metre-square space. They lay on the remains of the tent and laughed for a while longer, all of them savouring the fresh air and lack of body parts sticking into them.

At last, George dragged himself upright, gently disentangled Bob’s face from his hair and looked back towards the van. Then he said, with renewed vigour: “Bean time.”

Ultimately, the campfire was a much more successful endeavour than Tent Time had been. Jeff and Bob gathered some sticks and kindling and passed them to Roy, who for some reason knew exactly how to build a fire, while Tom and George got the beans and Hobnobs from the boot and prepared the only meal they had eaten all day. For some reason it tasted remarkably good, which Tom did not think boded well for his culinary prospects. After an hour or so of eating beans and Hobnobs, and eventually beans _with_ Hobnobs, George brought out the guitars from the van and they played some terrible songs and a couple of quite good ones. Once they had worn themselves out, they all climbed back into the van—George left the flat tent lying sadly on the ground—and spread themselves out across the seats, which George said was a guaranteed way of getting a bad neck in the morning but was the only option they had. Bob curled up in the boot and fell asleep immediately, which would have been quite cute if Tom hadn’t realised that the boot was the far superior option for places to sleep when he was lying upside down in the backseat with Roy’s feet on his neck.

Despite the unwilling semi-garrotting, Tom slept through the whole night and woke up with the sun in his eyes and Jeff snoring very loudly in his ear. The van was pleasantly warm and quiet, other than the snoring. From behind the front headrest Tom could see George with his face pressed into the steering wheel, obviously still dead to the world; and a pair of socked feet sticking straight up behind the backseats told him that Bob had somehow managed to flip upside down in the night. Even Roy hadn’t woken up yet, despite the birds making a frankly unnecessary amount of noise right outside the van.

All things considered, Tom thought, this wasn’t too bad. Even if he had been woken up at six-fifteen for a road trip.

It was really quite comfortable, being the wrong way up in George’s van, even if Jeff was making a racket in his ear and Roy’s feet were crushing his windpipe a bit. Perhaps he’d go back to sleep for a while.

That was exactly what he did, until twenty-five minutes later when George sat bolt upright in the driver’s seat, bonked his head violently on the ceiling and yelled, “Oh, fuck, it’s the album party this afternoon!”

After that, Tom didn’t get much sleep at all.

“Well, we’re definitely The Traveling Wilburys now,” Jeff said optimistically half an hour later, as they barrelled down the motorway at the speed of sound, all of them bouncing a foot into the air at every bump and trying to hold onto Bob so he didn’t fly out the window.

“Living up to our name,” Tom said, grinning at George, who had maintained a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel since they set off. “Don’t worry, George. We’ll make it.”

“We can chuck Bob out the window if we need to lighten the load, since he’s absolutely massive,” said Jeff, relinquishing his grip on Bob’s sleeve to give him a good-natured pat on the shoulder.

“Thanks, Jeff,” Bob responded, “I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I’ll come too if they throw you out the window, Bob,” Roy offered generously, before George yelled back, at the top of his lungs, “No one is being thrown out the window!”

Yes, Tom thought, this truly was the life.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on tumblr @sneez, or my wilburys blog @incorrectwilburys!

**Works inspired by this one:**

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